Gary Sheffield struck out looking with Jose Reyes 90 feet away from tying the game in the bottom of the 12th inning today, to give the Mets their 2nd loss in 3 days against the Braves. This was an exciting game from start to finish, with the Mets playing catch up the whole way through. They came from behind on 3 separate occasions to either tie the game or take the lead, but were unable to hold on. The lead was given away a final time as Martin Prado crushed a solo home run against the last man left in the Mets bullpen, Ken Takahashi.
Jon Niese struggled early and often today, giving up a pair of runs in the 1st and 3rd innings respectively. He was also charged with the run that scored in the 5th inning after he was taken out. The Mets answered in the first as Luis Castillo tripled to follow up Jose Reyes’ lead off double to give the Mets their first run of the day before an out was recorded. After a Carlos Beltran walk, Gary Sheffield grounded into a 5-4-3 double play that knocked in Castillo to tie up the game.
The Mets next fireworks came down 4-2 in the bottom of the 4th as Fernando Tatis hit a grand slam to give the Mets their first lead of the day at 6-2. Tatis is known for hitting a grand slam or two, and this one was much needed.
Omar Infante scored the Braves 5th and 6th runs on sacrifice flies in the 5th and 7th innings respectively to tie the game, the 2nd coming after a costly error by David Wright put Infante at 3rd. The Braves took the lead in the top of the 8th on 2 doubles by Martin Prado and a pinch hitting Kelly Johnson meaning the Mets would have to come back one more time. Luckily they had it in them today as old man Sheffield hit a solo home run into the left field stands to tie the game up in the bottom half of the inning.
Ryan Church made a tremendous play in the top half of the 9th to bail out Frankie Rodriguez, in to pitch again today after throwing 2 innings yesterday. Rodriguez gave up a lead off double to Yunel Escobar and intentionally walked Larry Jones to set up the double play. Garret Anderson flied to right in the next at bat, and Church made a sick throw to third on the fly to double up Escobar who was trying to tag up.
I thought Church would score the winning run in the bottom of the 9th for what would have been a fitting ending to this hard fought game, when he lead off with a sharp single to left and moved to 2nd on an Alex Cora sacrifice. Unfortunately Jose Reyes and Luis Castillo both went down swinging to send the game to extra frames for the 2nd time in 2 days.
In addition to the 9th inning, the Mets had a man in scoring position in the both 10th and 12th inning, but failed to drive them in on both occaisons. Reyes led off the 12th with a double to left that was inches away from being a game tying home run. He was moved to 3rd by a Castillo sacrifice which set up the situation all Mets fans were hoping for. Reyes on 3rd with less than 2 outs and Carlos Beltran at bat. Unfortunately Beltran went down swinging on 3 pitches before Sheffield went down looking as mentioned at the beginning of this post.
What can we take from this game? The Mets seem to have lost the “lay down and die” attitude that’s been haunting them for the last 2 seasons. They will fight to get back into games both early, and late. Sure it stinks to lose the series, but they went down swinging…
With the exception of Shef in the 12th…
ZING
